


Love Goes to a Building On Fire

by therev



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 23:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16418165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therev/pseuds/therev
Summary: McCoy can't seem to tell Spock that he loves him. In the end, he doesn't have to. A sort-of-failed Five Times fic, in that the One Time got a little carried away.





	Love Goes to a Building On Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Includes a couple of scenes from episodes, at least one of which does not happen in quite the same way. Title is a good Talking Heads song and that's really the only reason it's the title.

"Why did the Captain let me live?" Spock, or rather, this universe's perverse version of Spock asked, pressing McCoy against a bulkhead, nearly crushing his wrist.

McCoy said nothing. What could he say? What words would satisfy the creature that held him? This brutal corruption of one of the best people McCoy had ever served with, had ever known? The Vulcan that Spock might have been had Vulcan never reformed?

So he said nothing. He did not regret that it was his doing that got him there, alone with not-Spock, his life on the line. He had known what he was risking and he had risked it for a patient (from whatever universe) and he would do it again if he survived this. 

What he regretted was that this Spock smelled the same as the other, like botanicals and spice, and that his voice was the same, calm or angry, that his hands felt the same when he placed his fingers on McCoy's psi points and muttered the words about merging their minds, that he had never told his Spock… 

"I will see what your mind sees, Doctor," the bearded Spock was saying, "I will know what you know."

There was not a flash of light as he expected, there was no pain at all. McCoy had been under general anesthesia exactly once in his life, and it was a little like that, only after the sudden calm slide into darkness there was a dream. Like a dream he could not control anything, only wait and watch as his mind was sifted through, sorted, parsed. He saw the events in the med bay moments before, heard himself saying that he wouldn't leave the Vulcan to die, saw Jim grant him the extra time. Further back he saw them all conversing in the Captain's quarters, confused on the transporter PADD, on their own ship just that morning before the beam down. All of this Spock flitted through quickly, faster as the time flew backward, like watching a holovid on rewind. Further and further back, days before, weeks, and he only caught glimpses of what Spock was observing. Jim laughing on the bridge, Uhura singing, Sulu cradling a plant with care, and Spock, the other Spock, McCoy's Spock. The images, the dream slowed then, when Spock was the main character, as if more carefully considered. Spock frowning at something McCoy had said. Spock bowing his head to speak surreptitiously with McCoy about Jim's well-being. Spock's long fingers flying over the controls at his station. Spock smiling at something McCoy had said. Spock stretched out on the biobed as McCoy put him back together after a dangerous mission. Spock sitting in the lab reading a PADD, dark head bent in thought as McCoy admired him.

With the images came emotions, shifting so quickly that McCoy felt queasy. Joy, anger, elation, laughter, fear, pain, desire, and here again the dream seemed to linger, savoring this unexpected find perhaps. Then it became truly a dream as he began to see things he had thought about but had never happened, fantasies played out, bodies entwined, hands and arms and lips and more. Even minds. McCoy would never admit ito another soul, hardly even to himself, that once he'd learned about the Vulcan practice of melding minds he had thought--not even thought, only hoped--that he might one day share such an incredible intimacy. 

And here he was. And it was the wrong Spock.

As quickly as he had slipped into the dream he was pulled back out of it, drawn back toward consciousness by the fingers prodding at his temple. 

The Spock that was not Spock released him and McCoy bent forward, hands on his thighs, swaying unsteadily, then slid to the floor, put his head between his knees and tried not to vomit.

"You have much loyalty in your world," the wrong Spock said somewhere above him.

McCoy still did not say anything. What was there to say, he still wondered.

There was a sound, boots on carpet, and then hands were on his arms lifting him up.

"You are not very unlike the Doctor McCoy of this universe," this Spock said when he held him up, facing him. McCoy wrenched out of his grasp and stood on his own legs again, still unsteady but so determined not to give the Vulcan the satisfaction of watching him collapse again that he somehow remained upright. 

Not-Spock smirked. "He is also a coward."  
____

"I love ya, Spock," McCoy said, grinning on the transporter pad, and slung his arms around Spock's neck, just that much taller to make a difference, to make McCoy stand up on his toes or Spock to lean down to kiss him. But Spock wasn't leaning. Spock wasn't kissing him. Spock wasn't doing much at all but staring down at him with a quirked brow and looking annoyed. McCoy thought that he should be annoyed in return but any love that couldn't overcome a little annoyance wasn't really love.

Someone laughed across the room. McCoy ignored it.

"Of course you do, Doctor," Spock said, deadpan. "You are in fact the third landing party member to declare an amorous attachment to my person. I must inform you, as I informed them, that I shall have to decline." He plucked McCoy's arms from around his neck.

"Go easy on him, Mr. Spock," someone said, humor in their voice, and it was Jim standing across the room.

"Now wait just a minute," McCoy said, verging on a whine. "I really mean it." He reached out again, this time to grasp Spock's arms, surprising strength beneath science blues, ready to shake him if he had to. "I do really love you, Mr. Spock. Why won't you believe me?"

Spock blinked at him, not the slow, bored blink of self righteous annoyance, but a quick flinch, a flutter of lashes. McCoy might not have seen it had he not been so close. 

There was no more laughter from Kirk's side of the room.

"I do not believe you, Doctor," Spock said again, shrugging out of McCoy's grip and stepping backward, "because you are intoxicated. You have been affected by the pollen of a native plant on the planet surface and are quite delusional, as are all of the crew."

"No, that's not--" McCoy stepped forward and Spock stopped him with a hand firm on his chest. This time his voice was harder, his gaze steely.

"I am not surprised at your not realizing there was an airborne allergen affecting you or your patients, even though it would not require considerable medical knowledge to recognize the effects, as you have never proven yourself to be particularly skilled in that field, whatever your status on this ship."

McCoy felt his temper flare, almost tamping out his heartache, felt his hands shape into fists. But he couldn't, he wouldn't hit Spock, of all people.

"Why you," he said, and his voice and his hands shook, "you cold-blooded, mean-hearted, son of a--"

"That's enough, Bones," Jim said softly, no longer amused, standing closer now, close enough that he put a hand on McCoy's shoulder.

McCoy blinked at him, then at the room, then turned back to Spock whom he had backed against the wall of the transporter pad.

"What's--" McCoy said, but couldn't really decide just which question to ask first.

"Extreme emotion, Doctor," Spock said, more gently now, "is the cure for the allergen. I must apologize for provoking you. My statements were not sincere."

"No," McCoy said, still confused, and Jim squeezed his shoulder.

"We beamed you up to help us devise a way to fix the others," Jim said. "We've brought up a few crewmembers already but it's pretty slow-going this way, and I knew Spock could get to you a lot faster than I could."

The room was very warm, or McCoy was anyway. He felt flushed head to toe, standing there between Jim and Spock, with a perfect memory of everything he'd just said, everything that had been said to him.

"No," McCoy said again, looking at Spock whose neutral features somehow read, just then, as sadness rather than boredom or disinterest. "I mean… yes, I see," he said, and cleared his throat and tried to relax the tension out of his body as he stepped away from Spock who watched him, unreadable.

"C'mon, Commander," McCoy said. "Let's go find a cure for happiness."  
_____

"You are not of this time," the elderly Vulcan said to him, standing on the observation deck of what looked to be a starship but was wholly unfamiliar to McCoy, sleeker, brighter, colder, and much too small for the Enterprise.

"I was just thinking the same thing," he said, and took a step, then looked down as his boots made no noise. He cast no shadow in spite of the harsh overhead light, and when he looked at his hands he could almost see through them. "I'm not sure I'm even really here at all." His voice sounded distant even to himself.

The Vulcan raised a silver-white brow, thoughtful. McCoy thought it was an awfully familiar expression.

"May I ask," the Vulcan said, "prior to your appearance here, were you assisting Mr. Scott in testing his newest calculations for matter transference and its effects on the human anatomy?"

"As a matter of fact, I was," McCoy said, tilted his head, feeling that there was something he could understand about the old Vulcan if he just looked at him the right way. "Why do you ask? And how do you know Scotty?"

The Vulcan took a step closer, a not-quite smile teasing at the corner of his lips. "There was an error in his calculations."

McCoy licked his lips, bounced on his heels. "If this is your way of telling me I've died, you'd better just come out and say it, and while you're at it tell me how I managed to get into Vulcan heaven, of all places."

"You are not dead, Doctor. You are simply chronologically displaced." Now the smile was not teasing, it was real, and McCoy recognized him all at once, all grey and silver and white and green, in an austere black robe and looking so devilishly smug.

"Spock? Are you, I mean--" He stepped forward again soundlessly, reached out a hand as if he might touch him to be sure, as if he would even if he could.

"Yes," Spock said simply, his eyes small and dark and sparkling with amusement. "You are approximately one-hundred-thirty years in the future. You will return momentarily when Mr. Scott realizes his error and reverses the stream. You will be unharmed."

"You remember it?" McCoy asked.

"Of course."

McCoy laughed softly. "Boy, Scotty will be pretty pleased with himself to learn he's invented transporter time travel."

Spock moved closer, close enough that he reached out to touch McCoy and McCoy's heart, or at least the ghost of it, half translucent in his chest, skipped. But Spock's hand met only air instead of McCoy's cheek, and Spock replaced his hand behind his back.

"You see, Doctor," Spock said softly, his voice filled with the gravity of age, his eyes dark but shining, "it has not been exactly successful. It will not be perfected for a very long time, and not by Mr. Scott. In fact, you will not tell him of this, and you will not tell anyone of your conversation with me."

"But why not?"

Spock raised his brows, an expression so familiar he seemed to McCoy to change in an instant, to once again be, just for a moment, the young Vulcan he'd left back in his own time.

"Because you never told me," he said simply.

McCoy swallowed, wished that he could reach out.

"Did I ever tell you," he said, his voice shaking, "did I ever have to guts to admit to you that I…" he licked his lips.

"Yes," Spock said, "you did."

McCoy took a long, ragged breath. "Well, Mr. Spock?"

The Spock that both was and was not his Spock said nothing, only regarded him with eyes so dark and familiar that McCoy wondered how he had not recognized them instantly, and then McCoy felt the tell-tale tingle in his belly. Just before the world changed back, before McCoy was back on the transporter pad of his own Enterprise, his own young Spock standing across the room over Scotty's shoulder, brows furrowed in confusion or concern or who knew what, the Spock of the future smiled.  
_____

His hands were tied. The tree trunk he was tied to, pale and tall in the fire light, soared up into the canopy overhead, black as the night sky when he looked up, way up. Were those stars twinkling or something else? Something wet and blinking? Something watching them? Next to him, or rather, three meters away from him, at the base of another tree, Spock sat. He looked worse than McCoy felt. He had put up more of a fight and had lost. It had earned him a split lip, green blood black in the flickering light, and cracked or bruised ribs, McCoy guessed from the way that he breathed, and probably a concussion. 

A bright flash overhead and the clearing they were in was as bright as day for just a split second, a rumble of thunder followed the darkness a breath later. The fire crackled and as McCoy watched him, Spock's head lolled.

Where the hell was Kirk? Where was the rest of the crew?

"Spock?" McCoy said, and Spock turned to him after a moment in which it began to rain. Only a soft, misting rain, not enough to extinguish the fire that burned for them. Or burned for something else that was meant to show up and eat them, since neither he nor Spock was close enough to gain any warmth from it. The natives had called them a grating word which the translator, before it had been destroyed, had told them meant _sacrifice_. Sacrifice to what, they had not yet learned.

"Yes, Doctor?" Spock said quietly and McCoy regretted the pain he could hear in Spock's voice.

"Spock, I've got something to tell you," McCoy said, and then it began to rain harder.

"I am at your disposal," Spock replied drily. Just like him to try to be witty at a time like this.

"Well," McCoy said, a little more loudly against the rain. He licked his lips only to find them dripping with rain water. He shut his eyes against it. It was suddenly pouring. "Dammit! Can you still hear me?" he shouted.

Spock's reply was inaudible as he hung his head to let the rain pelt the back of it, to run cold down his neck, water sluicing over the perfect black bowl of his hair in the last of the flickering light.

The fire went out and the noise was like a wall between them, the darkness complete. Was Spock still there, McCoy wondered. Could he really hear him? The ropes at his wrists might as well have been around his chest, as tight as it felt. 

He had to do it now or he might never. Even if Spock couldn't hear him. There may not be another chance.

"I love you, Spock!" he said as loudly as he could, and the rain on his lips made it sound a little funny so he tried again. "I love you! I have for a long time! I just couldn't bring myself to… to, I don't know, let you laugh at me. Or whatever a Vulcan does at something so ridiculous. But I don't care now, I…." There was no sound but the rain, no light but the dying red of the embers and even those were slowly going black.

"Did you hear what I said?" he shouted.

Only the roar of the rain on leaf and limb and mud and perhaps the night air itself, thick as it seemed, answered him.

"Spock?"

A light in the trees shone suddenly, a beam straight and true, casting about, blinking out as a tree trunk blocked it, then appearing again.

"Something's coming, Spock!" McCoy called out, and then Jim Kirk called back, and the light moved into the clearing, joined by a second, a third, and the voices of Chekov and Uhura came with them, and Spock, when Kirk shined his light on him, was not moving.

_____

On the ship, in med bay, his hair still wet though he wore dry scrubs, McCoy monitored Spock's vitals. They were all over the place, but then they usually were. M'Benga had been there and had patched up Spock's busted lip and busted ribs but Spock slept on. M'Benga had reassured McCoy that it was only a healing trance, that Spock would wake whole and hale.

"You should get some rest, Doctor," Christine told him, her hand on his shoulder where he sat near Spock's bed. "I'll watch him," she promised softly. The lights were low. It was late Gamma and there were no other patients but a sick tribble, the security team that had beamed down with them having died on the planet. Vaporized. There'd be a service at Alpha.

"No," McCoy said, no longer trying to sound as neutral as he might have once done. If anyone understood his concern, it was Christine. "I'd better be here, just in case… just…" He blinked and wet his lips and tried to think of a reason, but she didn't ask him to clarify, just smiled softly and squeezed his shoulder as she left and told him to call her at any hour.

McCoy watched the monitors, bright in the half light, then he watched Spock's chest rise and fall, then he watched Spock's face, still as stone. After a while he stood and moved to sit sideways on the edge of the bed, then reached out and pushed aside the blanket to touch Spock's hand. He felt a little guilty. If Spock had been awake he might have protested the contact, but he was not, and McCoy needed it. He needed it so much that merely the touch brought the knot in his stomach up into his throat. He tried to swallow it, to fight the stinging in his eyes. After another moment he took Spock's hand in both of his and held it in his lap, warm between his palms.

He tried to remember why he ever cared so much about what Spock did and did not know. Spock wouldn't really laugh at him. He might decline anything McCoy offered, but he wouldn't do it with cruelty. There was nothing cruel about Spock, no matter how hard he tried to seem aloof or indifferent. McCoy knew better, had known better for a long time, even if he chose to pretend otherwise. Why had he done that?

He stroked the back of Spock's hand, lined with green-yellow veins, dotted with a tiny birthmark over the index metacarpal, nails neat and perfect. He turned it gently palm up, the soft skin pinker, his life line (if either of them believed in such things) long and prominent. On the pad of his thumb a white scar that McCoy knew had been made by enemy phaser fire and a very close call.

Then he turned Spock's hand again in his and held it, and waited. The monitors beeped now and then, Spock breathed in and out, the environmental controls clicked on and off. Eventually, he slumped and slept.

McCoy dreamed of Vulcan. The air was dry and hot and the light was wine-colored and sideways, like sunset at the end of a long summer day. There were rocks under his feet and a yellow orb on the horizon and two satellites winking down at him distantly. He'd been there once and this was definitely Vulcan. He just couldn't think why he was there.

He walked along a mountain path, so high up the air was thin, but in the dream it didn't seem to matter. He breathed as easily as he did in the medbay. Logically because he was still there. Funny that he'd never before had this sort of clarity in a dream, of actually knowing that the ground beneath his feet, the sky above, was only real in his unconscious state, that he was not really on Vulcan at all, but drifting through space just outside the Rigel system, feet firmly planted on the deck of the USS Enterprise.

Rocks scattered as he kicked at them, dust discolored his pants legs, and the still air smelled of dry, heated stone, ancient sulfides that pricked at his nostrils. So real, no matter what he knew to be true, and he went up the mountain path, curving ever tighter around the peak as it ascended, until near the summit he encountered a figure perched on a rock outcropping, clothed in black, sitting cross legged and very still.

"Mr. Spock?" McCoy said and Spock opened his eyes. The rock he sat upon was somewhat above McCoy so that he looked down at him. He frowned.

"Dr. McCoy," Spock said, and then was quiet for a full thirty seconds before he said, "Your presence is unexpected."

McCoy crossed his arms and leaned against the rockface. "Well I guess that's the nicest way of saying 'what the hell are you doing here' that I've ever heard."

Spock raised a brow. "It is a fair question, all things considered," he said evenly, carefully.

"Is it? Well I guess I could say the same about you showing up here and being a smartass in my dream..." he took a breath, somehow still shy about the subject, even in the privacy of his own mind. "But then I know why you're here."

"Is that what you believe?" Spock asked after a moment, the sun so bright behind him that his face was dark. "That we are in a dream that you are having?"

McCoy shrugged. "What else?"

Spock blinked slowly as if conceding the point or acknowledging McCoy's failed logic, McCoy didn't know, didn't really care, and when Spock made no other comment McCoy began climbing up the rock beside him. It was warm in the sun, the stone hot on his hands and his backside when he sat right up close to Spock who did not move away but regarded him with one brow raised in bewilderment, as if McCoy was being very brazen.

"Nice day," McCoy said, and drew up one knee, the other stretched out ahead of him on the rock. He smiled and Spock blinked at him.

"It is adequate," Spock said.

McCoy laughed. "Boy, I can't even dream you less Vulcan than you are," he said and Spock just blinked at him again slowly, like McCoy was a child and Spock a patient parent, and either the dream or the look on Spock's face, so close, made him add, "But, you know, I wouldn't want to," without a hint of gile or teasing, and it was like taking a deep breath after being underwater. He found that it was easy to be honest to dream Spock. "You're just the right amount of Vulcan, I think." He smiled. "In fact, I wouldn't change anything about you."

"Is that so, Doctor?" Spock asked, his calm, dark eyes showing an uncertainty that made McCoy regret a lot of things.

"Yes," McCoy said gently, "of course. I guess… well I guess I thought you always knew I was just being facetious. I don't know why," he shook his head, "I sure didn't give you much cause to think otherwise. I am… sorry for that Mr. Spock."

Spock frowned houghtfully. This near to him McCoy could see that shadow of stubble on his jaw, tiny wrinkles in the corners of his eyes, hear him breathing softly and evenly, and he thought that perhaps not all of the warmth he felt was from the sun.

"It was obvious," Spock said at last, "that your xenophobic tendencies did not extend to other beings beyond myself, therefore I deduced it was my personal makeup which sparked a particular disapproval--"

McCoy drew in a sharp breath and said, "No, never Spock, I--" but Spock continued.

"--however, your actions made it clear to me that this was also untrue," Spock said, and McCoy relaxed. "Thereafter I began to understand that camaraderie and enmity are not mutually exclusive."

"Not enmity, Spock," McCoy said and reached out, touched Spock's arm through the soft, warm cloth of this robe. He felt real, solid, not like a dream at all, but then so did everything else in this place. "Have you ever… I don't suppose that little Vulcan boys pull the braids of little Vulcan girls, do they?"

Spock thought. He did not shrug out of McCoy's touch. "While I understand your reference, I disagree with your ascription of gender and gender stereotypes."

McCoy smiled, squeezed Spock's arm where he touched him. Now that he had hold of him, he didn't want to let go. "Of course you do. All I meant was..." he looked down, even in his dream it was difficult to hold that long, unflinching stare.

"I know what you meant, Doctor," Spock said, his voice low and gentle and precise, and McCoy looked up again to find Spock watching him just as softly.

In real life, on the real Vulcan, something would have crawled up and bit one or both of them by now, or some flying thing might have swooped down to peck at them, or McCoy, at the very least, would be suffering from heat exhaustion, but in his dream they only sat together, staring, waiting for… McCoy wasn't sure what could happen in this dream, but he knew what he wanted.

"May I kiss you, Spock?" he asked.

Spock was quiet. He seemed to be thinking. He did not look annoyed or disgusted, more like he was studying a new species of animal or plant. He looked curious. The longer he was quiet the more McCoy began to wish he would never say anything at all, because then at least he would not say no.

"Yes," Spock said.

"Yes?" McCoy asked stupidly. 

Instead of answering, Spock leaned toward him and McCoy did likewise and then they were kissing, just like that. Every day for a thousand days on a ship together, bickering and assisting one another, and laughing at Jim together, and annoying one another, and saving each other, and not saying things to each other, and now they were kissing. 

It was quite easy, kissing Spock. Sure, McCoy's heart pounded and his palms sweated and he probably gripped Spock's arm too tightly, but it felt simultaneously new and familiar, unpracticed and yet perfected, as if they'd already done this a thousand times. Perhaps they had, with words and looks, and actions, as if the application of lips was simply a punctuation to some conversation they'd had again and again.

It was sure nice, though.

"Boy," McCoy said when they parted and Spock still leaned close and so did McCoy and Spock watched him with dark intensity, studying him quietly, processing whatever he'd learned, because Spock rarely did anything without learning something. Then Spock pulled free the arm that McCoy still held, but only to wrap it around McCoy and to pull him close, and if their first kiss was nice, this one went supernova.

McCoy lost track of time as they sat and held each other, but what was time in a dream? He didn't want to leave it anyway.

"I don't want to wake up," he said, watching Spock's hand in his as they sat together watching the Vulcan sun set, all deep, hot reds and purples over the undulating horizon. He traced Spock's life line and it reminded him of where he really was, on the Enterprise, in sick bay, sitting next to Spock in the bed. 

"We must, Doctor," Spock said.

"What's this 'we' business?" McCoy asked, amused by dream Spock's presumption.

"I have completed my healing trance," Spock said and his breath tickled at McCoy's temple. "When I wake, so must you."

"You mean that I should wake up and bring you out of the trance?" McCoy asked, a little confused.

"No, Leonard," Spock said, and touched McCoy's face so that McCoy would meet his gaze even as he spoke his name so softly, almost apologetic. "You are not asleep. You are not in a dream. You are in my mind."

McCoy frowned. He straightened, moving not out of Spock's reach, but out of his embrace. "That's… not possible."

Spock nodded minutely. "This morning I would have said the same. But it would seem that you have, without trying, proven me wrong. Perhaps it was your emotional state and the physical contact, perhaps it was a remnant of the mind meld with my alternate self--"

"You know about that?" McCoy asked, heat prickling at his spine. Something heavy dropped in his belly and he climbed off of the rock. "Jim said he'd leave that out of the report."

"The Captain kept his promise," Spock said, laying his hands slowly in his lap now that they were no longer holding McCoy. "You told me."

"I did not!" McCoy spat.

"I am sorry, Doctor," Spock said, and he did sound sorry, his voice quiet and his body still, and his face so full of concern, "but you did. From the moment you came here you have shared so many things with me. I did not probe," he said quickly when McCoy began to protest, "but I could not deny that which was so freely given."

Something ached in McCoy's hands and he realized they were in fists at his sides. He breathed heavily, rapidly, the approaching darkness suddenly more stifling than the full sun.

"Get us out of here, Mr. Spock," McCoy said.

There was a pause, something quivered in Spock's gaze, and then Spock said, "Yes, Doctor."  
_______

Spock was asleep when McCoy opened his eyes, not meditating, just asleep, and McCoy nearly tumbled off of the bed but caught himself and stood on wobbling, half-numbed legs, still holding Spock's hand. He laid it back on the bed carefully, covered it again with the blanket, and left before Spock could wake.

It was still gamma and the hall lights were at fifty percent. Twilight on the Enterprise. In his quarters he ordered his lights to zero and headed to the washroom to splash water on his face. He didn't want to see his reflection.

He ordered a drink and a glass of water from the replicator, downed them both in rapid succession, still in the dark, only a few power indicator lights winking red or green, and then he lay himself down on his bed.

It was a dream, he thought. It couldn't be real; he couldn't have really climbed inside Spock's consciousness, not really. That was the dream. He had dreamed that he had melded with Spock. It wasn't the first time. But then, it had never happened quite like that, certainly never on Vulcan, never so linear or sensical. Yet there was simply no other explanation.

Against the blanket of darkness he replayed scenes, remembered the way the Spock had held him, remembered the sunset and the rock hot on the backs of his thighs.

He woke later, still in his clothes and shoes, when someone sat on his bed.

"Doctor," Spock said.

The room was dimly lit when McCoy opened his eyes and turned to face the familiar sound, rolling over onto his back to find Spock there, sitting straight-backed on his bed, looking well again, and dressed in blue.

"Mr. Spock," McCoy said cautiously. "How did you get in?"

"The lock was not engaged," Spock said.

McCoy looked around the room without really moving. Everything was in its place, it smelled like his quarters, and his body leaned toward the dip in the mattress where Spock sat in a way that seemed plausible. "Is this real?"

"It is," Spock said, and waited.

After a moment of Spock looking down at him and the environmental controls filling the room with cooler air, McCoy asked, "It wasn't a dream was it?"

"No, Doctor," Spock said. "It was not."

"I didn't mean to--I don't even know how I did it."

"I know. No apology is required." Spock spoke softly, the sound of it rumbling in his chest, through the bed, filling the room. His eyes were soft and black in the half light.

McCoy took a long breath, in and out, then cleared his throat. He was glad for the cooler air piping in. He was growing rather warm.

"Well," he said, and tried to sit up, but Spock touched his shoulder gently and he lay back down.

"When I told you that I did not probe," Spock said, taking his hand from McCoy's shoulder to place it on the covers across McCoy's body, leaning over him slightly, "that was true. It was also true that I could not resist the flow of information from you. Too much of my mind was occupied with the healing trance."

"It's fine, Spock, I--"

"It is also true," Spock said quickly to keep McCoy from saying anything else, "that I was unable to communicate anything reciprocally." He moved again, the sound of fabric on fabric and on skin and the gentle creak of the bed so loud in the quiet of the room, and smoothed McCoy's hair with his other hand. "I would like to share that with you now if you would consent."

McCoy's heart was pounding. He struggled to breathe evenly, and felt foolish for lying so still but he didn't know what he could or should do and so he did nothing except to close his eyes, feeling Spock's fingers comb so gently through his hair. When he opened them again he reached up to touch Spock's wrist, a mirrored gesture of when that other Spock, brutal, corrupted, and cold, had nearly broken his, and he remembered the helpless, anesthetized feeling of that first meld.

"It will not be as unpleasant as that," Spock said.

"Are you already reading my mind, Spock?" McCoy asked, just above a whisper.

Spock shook his head. "I do not have to."

Then McCoy took a breath and slid his hand up over Spock's, pulled Spock's fingers down to meet his psi points, and Spock made a little sound, and parted his lips as if to speak but he did not.

Neither of them closed their eyes. McCoy had seen Spock perform several melds and this did not look like those. It looked, it felt, very easy. Like kissing Spock, like fighting with Spock, like loving Spock. Any outside observer would have wondered just what they were doing, so still, staring into each other's eyes. Then McCoy laughed and Spock smiled, and after another moment McCoy's amusement faded and he found that he had a voice.

"I'm sorry, Spock," he said. "I didn't know."

"Wait," Spock said, and they both went silent again until McCoy made a 'hmmm' sound and grinned, and Spock moved his hand, not away, only to stroke McCoy's cheek, and McCoy felt utterly, bonelessly relaxed. He stretched and sprawled beneath Spock.

"Thank you," he said, "for sharing that with me."

Spock nodded, made that same, small sound and said, "May I kiss you now, Leonard?"

McCoy smiled, reached up and pulled Spock down to him, and said without saying, yes.


End file.
